


Back to the Future (With a Dash of the Past)

by JUBE514, theeyesofthestorm1848



Series: Time Travel'n Palidin's [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Attempt at Humor, Everyone gets a chance to say goodbye, Fluff, Gen, Haggar messed up, He has problems okay?, How Do I Tag, Humor, Hunk gets a chance to say goodbye, Iverson is a bad teacher, Lance gets a chance to say goodbye, Minor Angst, Not Beta Read, Peanut Butter, Pidge has a problem, These characters are my children, Time Travel, but an okay person, episode AU, i have many feelings, older paladins, retelling of episode one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JUBE514/pseuds/JUBE514, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theeyesofthestorm1848/pseuds/theeyesofthestorm1848
Summary: Haggar gets mad, messes up, and sends the Paladins back in time one day before they leave earth to fight the good fight against Zarkon. The paladins get to say goodbye, make their peace, and go back to their lions for the first time again.Too bad Commander Mitch Iverson sees the dramatic changes in his students and jumps to the conclusion that they have to be alien spies.





	Back to the Future (With a Dash of the Past)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [(the entire discord)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=%28the+entire+discord%29).



> this is 30 pages and at least 15 of them were written on vacation on my phone. Enjoy.

Lance gasped awake, heart pounding and hands curling around control sticks that weren't there.The afterimage of a blue cockpit around him slowly faded away, the stars behind his eyes blurring into the room around him. 

A room that Lance had never thought he’d see again. 

A string of fairy lights hanging carefully with tacks, two closets overstuffed with clothing and multiple pairs of shoes carefully placed on top that neither one of them should’ve had. The clock on the bedside table between him and Hunk glowed a soft blue, the time on it reading 00:00. 

Hunk had also jumped awake, his blanket catching on his arms and making him panic. Hunk was tossing the thick covers around with jerky movements, his eyes glazed as the environment around them him didn’t register.

“Hunk!” Lance called softly in the darkness of the room with an unsure weariness lacing his voice. “Hunk! Calm down buddy!” 

“Lance?” Hunk finally got the blanket off of himself and began to calm down. He sat up on his extra-long twin bed and frowned at the room they both seemed to find themselves in. “Are we where I think we are?”

Lance nodded, his eyes wide as he kept looking at his phone, which was carefully charging on the nightstand between them. “I-I think Haggar messed up Hunk.” Lance reaches for his phone, careful as he picks it up and looks at the little line at the top that for the past two and a half years read out ‘no service’. 

He feels it in his chest, an echoing sob that breaks out unbidden. “I have a message from my mom.” Lance hiccups out, “She said ‘Goodnight.’”

Hunk reaches for his own phone, the one he hadn’t gotten to bring with him, and he smiles gently at the picture of his two sisters on the lock screen. 

Both boys break down for a moment, in this impossibly happy moment, and they don’t even consider how it all came to be. 

Haggar had been locked in a battle with Voltron, her own circle of druids powering her up and all but dumping quintessence onto her battle platform to try and destroy the fully formed Voltron. She had been angry that her newest robeast had been demolished by a technical error early on in the fight and Haggar had been so mad, so irritated that her designs kept getting backlogged with unnecessary clogging junk and that Zarkon had given her a look that read disappointment without him saying anything. 

And Haggar had made a decision.

They had enough of the meteor left over from Lotor’s temperatum a year back, and if everything went right then the Galra would never have to deal with Voltron again, damn Zarkon’s want of the black lion all to himself, damn the roaches that had infested the empire with a vengeance, even damn her own son who was actively working against them to create a new empire right from underneath them. 

Damn everything. 

She would send these paladins out of this world, push them to the next universe and have them be done with this one. So she tells the Paladins this, screams it at them in a fit of frustration, she used the meteor and crushed it in her hands. She takes the universe from around the colorful outline of Voltron, holds it in her hands like fabric, soft and silky with a texture like nothing else, and she yanks.

The fabric in her hands doesn't rip, just pulls, it resists for a moment but ultimately spills forward and everything around them sprials. The fabric of the universe goes wild a moment, and Haggar knows that she has bitten off more than she can chew.

Inside Voltron, the five paladins are up in arms all trying to backtrack out of this spiral, use everything they have to get out of this tug that's too strong, too encompassing and total in its wholeness. 

Shiro was telling everyone to calm down, like he always is. Pidge is trying to get a reading on anything,trying to find a constant in the movement around them. Keith is spitting out one thing after the other, theories, plans, all half baked and more desperate down the last. Hunk is giving his all in the effort to move Voltron in its entirely, his entire body is taut with the controls. Lance was talkative as well, as he always was, but this time the blind panic was interrupted by him jerking the controls in his desperate attempts to move.

The entirety of everything gets pushed, pulled, and when it comes out the other side it snaps everyone into a place that they already were, once. 

Lance and Hunk wake up in a room that they once occupied together.

At the Garrison.

Lance sends a text to his mother, telling her that he loved her. Hunk spends a moment or two going through his phone’s pictures, silent tears slowly making their way down his face. 

They had somehow gone home? 

A pause as Lance is going over his text messages, sending out messages to his entire family as he notices the time. More specifically, the date. 

“Hunk.” Lance whispers to his friend, their legs touching in the small space between their beds. “Hunk look at the day.” 

Hunk, after a moment, clicks away from his family pictures and checks the date on his phone. A brief flicker of confusion, before settling on the face Hunk makes when he’s figuring out something. “It’s a day before we leave.” 

“A day before we leave, Hunk, we’ve started over.” Lance is suddenly laughing, eyes wide and full of mirth. “I’m texting my family right now.”

“We could be in an alternate universe.” Hunk hums as he also texts his own family, “Remember the whole thing with Sven there for a while? You’ve got to have learned a little bit from Slav this is literally his favourite topic.”

“We didn't pass through a rift, we just got yanked backwards.” Lance happily points out as his sister tells him off for texting her this late. He relishes in the contact for a moment, texting her back happily.

“She didn't have enough power to rip us through maybe?” Hunk is now full on ‘serious scientist mode’ as he goes through different scenarios in his head.

The two of them are discussing whether or not anyone else was put exactly back where they were a day before the paladins united with blue when the a pounding was heard on the door. Both hunk and Lance froze, hands whipping to their sides trying to call up a bayard that wasn't there. They looked at one another, eyes creating a conversation that lasted only for a moment before the voice on the other side of the door broke them from their reprieve. 

“Open up you assholes! I know you both are in there and most likely awake! Unless this really is another reality and I’m alone and hey wouldn’t that be super awkward to explain to you both at … well at almost one in the morning by now.” 

Lance is up and opening the door before Pidge can finish their whole sentence, standing in front of them for a brief moment before sweeping them up into the room in a great big hug. ‘Pidge!” Lance cheers happily before cooing as he swings Pidge around in his arms. 

“Get off of me!” Pidge begins to try and pry Lances long fingers from their waist. “I take it from this greeting you remember Voltron?” 

“I’d be an idiot to forget it all, it took up what, two years of our life so far?” Lance sets Pidge down and shows off his phone, the texts rolling in from his family seven time zones over, all telling him to go to bed. “You figure anything out so far Pidge?”

“I have actually! You guys I so miss Altean technology like you wouldn’t believe.” They sit carefully perched on Hunk’s desk chair, holding their trusted laptop and phone carefully. “All my tech’s been regressed to its starting position, no boosts, the battery life’s shit, but even with this I can figure out that we didn’t universe jump.”

“How so?” Hunk asks, eyes glued to his phone as he texts his own family. “You measure the universal constant against what? We don’t have anything to test the constant against in this facility, it's not advanced enough to reach that yet.”

“Tested it out by applying the constant to the flux in the electrons currently being studied in Switzerland.” Pidge shrugged, like it was easy enough to do any of that without a care. 

The three of them continue to talk to their family, slyly quizzing the other two on Voltron and their adventures throughout the years just to make sure the universes lined up correctly, when Hunk suddenly stopped talking and hyper fixated on Pidge.

Pidge noticed, and pulled back, making a beautiful double chin in the process as they questioned what Hunk was looking at. 

“Your hair.” Hunk pointed out. “It’s back to what it was like at the garrison.” 

Pidge perked up at that, and brushed a hand through their hair in the back and hummed in surprise. “You have shorter hair too, and look at Lance.” They jerk their head in Lance’s direction. 

Hunk immediately tried to pull his hair into a ponytail and failed. His shoulders fell at the motion, “I liked my hair that long, Shay called me handsome.” Hunk sighed.

Then jerked up in a panic. “Shay! She hasn’t been freed yet!” Hunk pulls both others closer to him in a comfort hug, a hug that will calm his fretting. 

“Hunk!” Pidge tried to wiggle their way out of the second hug that night, “Lance has both eyes! More important at the moment!” 

“I what!” Lance now also tries to wiggle out of Hunk’s strongman grasp. “I really have both eyes again? Did our bodies de-age?!” He’s twisting so hard that Hunk has to let him go or risk both of them injury. 

Sure enough, when Lance drags all three of them to the bathroom down the hall the three of them each look back at their younger bodies with a kind of melancholy. 

Hunk see’s a boy who’s not as study as he was yesterday, with shorter hair and without the scars peppering his right shoulder from protecting Pidge once while they went down during a humid mission on a desert planet. His skin is rougher, from not spending countless nights awake with Lance’s pulled together skin care cream. Hunk’s hands don’t have the countless callouses from holding onto his bayard, from piloting his lion, from working around the castle. Hunk’s shoulders are smaller than he remembers, he’s also shorter than he was last. 

Pidge’s hair wasn’t done up in an undercut anymore, long in the back and short in the front like it was when they first started their adventure and not when they had changed it on a trading planet that had a race of people covered with more hair than anyone else could imagine. They have no freckles scattered across their nose from that week on the beach planet that never went away and their whole body seems a kind of weightless loose. They feel off and weak and they hate it. 

Lance was also shorter, having gone through a growth spurt in space shortly after they arrived and shooting up above everyone else. He didn’t have the trailing scar on their face they received from a lucky Galra general who had found his sniping nest one mission on a Galra outpost. He lost an eye and a lot of blood, with the claw like wound across his face and trailing to his neck, that now had disappeared with the regression. Both blue eyes, the eyes that his mother loved so much, stared back at him. 

The look in each of their eyes was the only thing that hadn’t changed. 

Each one had their memories, their understanding of what they had done and were doing, the long nights in the lonely Castle of Lions huddled against each other for comfort, warmth, a feeling of home. They each knew each other inside and out, and they felt the temporary loss of having Allura’s early morning singing as she worked, Coran’s quirky sayings and jokes. They felt like, well, the three of them felt like only two legs and an arm of a person. 

Pidge checks the time, still amazed by her phone actually receiving updates instead of being just a device for date and time and photographs, and tells Hunk and Lance that they need to go to bed. 

Each of them hesitates a moment, before Lance offers up a sleepover. Pidge and Hunk immediately agree to it, shoulders relaxing from a tense that they didn't know they had gone up in. 

The three of them take shelter in Hunk and Lance’s room, the three pushed the twins together to make a queen and they all smushed together, legs tangled together in a pile like they always did after battles. Even with the three of them, Lance missed having to fight Keith’s long hair out of the way, missed having the sound of Shiro’s slightly weird breathing with the damage to his nose. 

“Do you think, wherever they are at the moment, that Keith and Shiro remember it all?” Pidge whispers in the dark. 

“I think Keith is missing out on a great cuddle pile.” Hunk hums half asleep already, “And I think Shiro is breaking out of prison? Or already has broken out of prison?” He sleepily shrugs. 

“I think when we get back to earth Shiro is going to get whiskey, then bring it to space. Make it space whiskey.” Lance giggles in that sleep deprived way he gets when he’s stayed up too late for too long. 

They all get a few hours, even if the white of the fairy lights wasn’t the familiar faint blue of the castle.

The next morning Lance hears the familiar ringing of his alarm clock and groans as he reaches out to shut off the damn thing. At least it wasn’t the Castle of Lion’s alarm going off again- 

Then it hits him and Lance is bouncing up, disentangling himself from both Hunk and Pidge and reaching out to his still charging phone to turn off the buzzing. Hunk sleeps like the damn dead sometimes, and Pidge is always a grumpy person to try and wake up in the mornings, so it's up to Lance to make sure both of them are aware and cognizant. 

Hunk wakes up slowly, blinking dreamily like he always did and frowning at the environment of the room before actually sitting up and realizing that they had a schedule to follow today. Pidge wakes up, by contrast, all at once, a spray of limbs jerking upwards and groaning from somewhere deep in their chest. It sounds like an owl waking up and honestly Lance just laughs as he pulls back the covers from Pidge and hears them yell in some brutal mix of at least four languages at once. 

Lance reaches for the clothes he had worn for the past two years, and Hunk directs his buddy to the Garrison training uniform. 

Pidge groans and realizes that all their clothing is in their room, along with a roommate they had never spoken to outside of four words, max. “He’s gonna think I’m walking the walk of shame. Damn it.” Pidge grumbles as they take off, pajamas crinkled and still sleep warm. 

Hunk and Lance only take a moment to remember dress code, the correct tucking of the black undershirt and the lay of the shoulders. Breakfast is just beginning to be served when the two of them tumble out of their room and head on down to the mess hall. 

The Galaxy Garrison was a military college that only took in the best and brightest minds all across the world, they had a strict regime that was followed by a strict eating schedule that was followed by a strict curfew. Everything had a time to do it, and a way to do it, and a person to report to. It was restrictive and constraining, and that’s why Lance remembers breaking out a lot, to liking having to constantly follow the orders of people who thought so very little of him. 

Breakfast was something beautiful for once, a break in the green goo and alien cuisine that had been gathered from all over the universe. It was bacon, eggs, pancakes, and a biscuit for the particularly hardy. One even had the option of getting a muffin if they wandered over to the pastry section and got lucky to be near enough to snag a lemon poppyseed before they ran out. 

Lance managed to grab three, one lemon poppyseed, one chocolate, and one peanut butter. 

Pidge joined them up, a little bit later than Lance and Hunk but no more irritated. They snagged the peanut butter muffin from Lance’s plate and shoved it in their mouth. 

“Bad morning?” Lance laughs as Pidge gives him the Altean version of the finger, which was the thumb to the bottom of the pinky finger with all other fingers straight, tapping the pointer finger to the chin and bringing the whole hand down forcefully. 

Hunk false gasps, placing a hand over his heart and looking so offended. 

Pidge swallows around their mouthful of muffin and explains that their roommate was an asshole who tried to get them into trouble for being out all night. “I explained it away with homesickness I think? I don’t know, I’m glad I don’t have to actually room with them.”

Hunk shrugs, and offers a sympathetic pat on their shoulder. “I know how you feel, my roommate is also an asshole.” 

“I take offense to that!” Lance leans away from Hunk with the most heartbroken face. 

“But I learned to live with him in this crazy alien castle and honestly? You never know who’s gonna turn out to be an okay dude.” 

The three of them laugh, an isolated island in the middle of the dining hall. 

Class that morning was … insufferable, really. It was Professor Montgomery droning on and on about stuff that was honestly? Kind of insulting to the Paladins of Voltron at this point. It was an entire lecture about how one should be incredibly care about collecting samples on various planets around the solar system. He had gotten sidetracked four times about the wonderful collection samples they had gotten from Mars recently, the red dirt particularly high in magnesium! 

Even Pidge seemed bored out of their minds, having undergone a similar tutorial with Coran when they were collecting plant samples that would be later used to spice the food goop with.

What the class was most excited about was the training simulator that afternoon, and honestly? Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were not to happy about having to participate in it. 

Lance because he had to be the pilot, and he hadn’t touched something that had english lettering on it for at about two years and his skills, whatever skills he had, with the simulator must have deteriorated into nothing by now. 

Pidge and Hunk because they couldn’t be the pilot of their own ship, and had to trust Lance’s quick turns and curling swaying way of getting through fields of debris. The two of them had to take a passive role in something they were used to controlling wholly by themselves. Hell, Pidge admits during the lunch before the simulator that they had no memory of what the hell they were actually meant to be doing in the simulator. Like, at all. 

Hunk remembers having to fix something, and Lance remembers having to avoid some kind of desert environment. 

Other than that the three feel underprepared, and a little understaffed with only three of them going into a battleship where normally seven people stood.

So when Iverson marched in, back straight and with a grin that promised pain, Lance knew that he would choose the three of them because of freaking course Iverson had hated Lance since he strolled into the class the first day and immediately started to joke around with all the cadets in the class with him. 

Pushed Lance harder than any other pilot, and was the sole reason that Lance wasn’t in fighter class in the first place even though Lance had both the grades and the simulator time to back him up. 

Hunk was no better, the poor guy had been paired with Lance because he had severe motion sickness and was never predicted to get off the ground. Iverson had constantly belittled Hunk, made fun of his appearance and his nerves. 

Pidge was placed with them because of their temper, ther volatile reactions and their repulsion of teamwork. Pidge had admitted to be a team breaker down in the garrison, tearing apart friendships with their goal in mind and a deep set hatred of their environment.

Their team was built to fail, and Shiro admitted, one night after a feelings jam session in the middle of the living room on the ship, that the Galaxy Garrison often built “failure teams” so that other teams would push themselves harder to not be compared to the “failure team”. Shiro also admitted in the same breath that he hated that practice, thought it was unfair to destroy the future of three kids just to secure the ones of twenty. 

Lance, Hunk and Pidge were the failure team, the team never meant to succeed, and guess where that got them?

Iverson pulled out his clipboard and listed off the team’s, in order, that were doing the simulation today. 

“Team McClain” was going first, just like they did last time. 

Putting on the spacesuit that just had the word ‘cadet’ written on the tag, Lance kept a keen ear on the kid four lockers over who kept repeating the flight instructions over and over under his breath, on repeat. It was a useful brush up on what Lance was actually mean to do, and what was expected of him during this whole exercise. 

Hunk was reading, his tablet in his hands and scrolling through the instructions. 

Pidge was looking over their notes, one the signal they were meant to receive, and if they retrieved four signals the mission would be considered a success and be over. If they retrieved the “drops” that were admitting the signal then they could get the full grade. 

No damage to the vehicle, each drop being acquired and tested out on ship, and then a return to base to get the full grade. Sounded easy enough. 

Lance, when paying attention, was a fine pilot. Pidge and Hunk could work literal magic with anything they needed to when they put their minds to it. 

How hard could it be? 

Very hard, apparently. 

Lance, surprisingly, was able to start up the simulator with little problem. He adjusted his seat -after a few grumblings about auto adjusting seats and how he missed his Blue- and was surprisingly at ease with the controls. Lance had always been good at muscle memory, and he had the most time in the simulator out of everyone that Hunk knew. Once Lance was in the simulator, at the captain's chair, he had fallen back into a groove. It wasn't flawless, but it had the backing of flying a massive spacecraft nearly everyday and managing an Altean spaceship on the fly. 

Hunk had gotten over his motion sickness ages ago, he had ways to manage the unease in his stomach that came from nerves and anxiety. Hunk was a man of science, and had been jerry rigging shit from space, in space, and with no space, for two and a half years. Hunk knew how to fix just about anything if given enough time and material. Hunk had the brains to back up his brawn, and if he had to he would absolutely fix the thing, just not in the most ‘correct’ way, probably. 

Pidge knew that their job would be the hardest to actually bullshit. They were the least diplomatic on the team, maybe tied with Keith. Actually Keith was probably worse with anyone but the Galra, who only kinda liked him because he was half Glara. Pidge knew computers, knew their way around a system, was small and fast and agile, but this wasn’t a computer and Pidge had to actually communicate with fake ‘bases’ in this exercise to get the ‘information’ they needed and it's frustrating to have to try to talk their way into information they could otherwise get via forcing their way into a system. 

So when the three paladins get out of the failed simulator with sheepish grins and barely contained laughter Iverson is madder than a wet hen. 

“You three somehow managed to successfully manage the four signals, dodge the canyon you were placed in, even the enemy fire towards the end. How the hell did you idiots manage to fuck it up this badly!” Iverson was actually red in the face with how mad he was. 

“You! Gunderson! I know you have never taken a piloting class in your damn life do not try and backseat drive and focus on your fucking job! A communications officer talks to the people around them! You gave that job to your goddamned pilot while you just took up the deciphering of the signals! You even invaded Garrett’s space when he needed to fix something he should have been able to!” 

Iverson rounds on Hunk now, “While you surprised me by not hurling, have you seen the job you’ve done?!” This is a plane you’re flying cadet! You needed to keep in it the air and not play fucking science experiment with this equipment! You went over these machines two weeks ago in class how did you fuck this up this badly!”

Then he glares at Lance, his one eye furious, “I cannot even believe you.” Iverson’s voice goes low, cold and terrifying. “You, not only did you fly so cockeyed that I don’t know how the hell you didn’t crash in the first ten minutes, you also took over your communication officer's job, and let Gunderson almost take over everything that had to do with pickup! You even encouraged both of them to get out of their seats and work together on the floor of the cockpit!” 

He leans back from the cadets in front of him, breathing heavily and still red. 

“Can anyone tell me why they crashed?!” Iverson reaches out to the class, seeing a learning moment. 

“Hunk kept screaming about something he called ‘Allura’ and ‘Coran’.” 

“Lance wouldn’t stop making comparisons of the flight sim to what he called ‘blue’”

“Pidge kept screaming that they would kick the ass of both Lance and Hunk the entire time.”  
“The three of them seemed to work really well together.” A redhead in the back pipes up. “But they don’t seem to know the simulator at all.” 

“As evident!” Iverson swings back to the three cadets standing outside of the sim, “By the fact that McClain as they were leaving the final dropzone finally looks down at his console and you know what you said cadet?” 

“I said, ‘Damn, forgot how to pilot in english’, and then the whole plane went into a graveyard spiral.” Lance shrugged, seemingly not worried about how Iverson was screaming at them. 

“Yeah, because when was the last time you flew something with actual wing-” Hunk’s whispering was cut off by Pidge’s sharp little elbow digging into Hunk’s side. “Quiznack!” Hunk hissed out under his breath instead. 

Iverson was fuming, because sure the three in front of him failed the flight simulator but before they dropped like a rock out of the sky the three of them outperformed the best he had seen out of the entirety of the freshman class. 

Sure, the team was unconventional and all tried to butt into the other's space, each taking over for the other when something wasn’t working out. They did it flawlessly, effortlessly, twisted together to fill gaps that occurred when they were working. The only problem with the whole thing was that they were clearly unfamiliar with the simulator, without being unfamiliar with flying and Iverson was confused. 

So Iverson made a pact with himself at that very moment, try and find out what the actual hell happened. 

In fact, as the cadets all headed off to their afternoon classes Iverson took a moment to consider how ... different the three were from yesterday. 

Iverson walked into his office, opened his computer, and pulled all the camera’s he could from yesterday, finding Pidge, Hunk, and Lance all separate from each other and unsure of their positions like all the other frehsman in the class.

What had happened? 

Iverson watches the cameras, is fast forwarding towards this morning when he catches Gunderson bolting from his room at nearly one in the morning wrapped in a blanket carrying what looked to be a laptop to head to Lance and Hunk’s shared room. A moment or two afterwards the three of them are running out to the bathrooms. 

Which is good for Iverson because the bathroom cameras have microphones in them to hear. 

The three chatted about all kinds of weird things, the mention of ‘Allura’ and ‘Coran’ cropped up again. A mention of hairstyles and … age? Lance kept poking at his eye. 

They also mentioned something that made Iverson’s blood go cold. The word that had been floating around the airwaves in the depths of space near Kerberos ever since the mission went down. The word that was kept as under wraps as the details of the disappearance of the Kerberos Pilots. 

“I can't wait to get to Blue again.” Lance was saying on the screen as he played with Pidge’s hair. “Form Voltron for the first time.” 

Voltron. 

Iverson paused the recordings and rewound several seconds. He must had misheard them, they may have said something completely different. There was absolutely no way in hell that Lance should know about Voltron, nor should Pidge and Hunk know what he’s referring too, let alone agree with him. He listens to their voices again. And there it was, plain as day, no interference in the microphone, no slur or mumble in Lance’s words as he so casually says it.

Voltron.

Iverson sits back in his chair, lips pursed, hands clasped below his chin- almost in a prayer. There is no way these little punks should know classified information like this. No way unless they were involved. This revelation, mixed with what he’d seen today in the simulation, was a concoction that made his stomach turn. All of a sudden these kids who had seen set up purely to fail, improved beyond expectations to a point where the technology presented to them was a hindrance. 

Of course it was far-fetched to accuse teenagers of being a part of a matter of national (possibly international--no--planetary) security, if he told this to any one of his superiors they’d laugh him out of the garrison, calling him “spiteful” and “out to get these kids” like they had so many times before. It was a fool’s mission, Iverson knew it, and took several steadying breaths to calm his nerves and convince himself that he was overreacting. 

And then the alarms went off. Then he was being called in for a matter of grave importance- some extra-terrestrial object on a collision course with the area outside the compound. Iverson checked the camera feeds once more, searching for those cadets. To no surprise of his, there they were, racing off the campus to follow the party investigating what had just crashed.

Iverson wasn’t reaching with his suspicions anymore… he was right on the money. 

It took Hunk, Pidge, and Lance a bit longer than anticipated to get out of the lockdowned garrison and trek across desert terrain as they were once again in the out-of-shape bodies they’d had prior to becoming paladins. Instead of an easy jog across a relatively navigable and free of hostility area--something they would have been grateful for on a mission--they were met with unsure feet slipping and catching rocks, sweat dripping down shirts and slicking their hands, and legs that screamed for rest only a quarter of the way through the journey. 

Eventually they reached the vantage point by which they observed the garrison’s camp the first time. Precious minutes were saved by Pidge not needing to subvert video camera feeds because they knew Shiro was in there- unless this really was an alternative universe and it wasn’t Shiro but Sven or something strapped down to that table. Oh boy wouldn’t that be an awkward situation. So they waited in a tense silence for the eventual distraction caused by Keith, and of course, eventually regaining their fourth and fifth team members. 

If the sound of the explosion might have frightened them more by virtue of their expectancy of it, the shock was deadened by two years of battle. Checking binoculars to follow Keith’s movements towards the camp, they wordlessly followed, not needing to confer or agree on a course of plan. This part should be easy, they’d already done it once after all.

Finally they saw Keith’s strange hovercraft (he never did explain how he came about making that contraption) and the telltale mullet (Lance made sure to point it out, declaring the observation at the top of his lungs). They made their hasty reunion behind the same rock pile Keith had parked, Hunk pulling the right arm of Voltron into a bone crushing hug and Lance jabbing Keith in the ribs and giving a good-natured “I’ve sure missed your ugly face!”

“Lance,” Keith didn’t even try to feign excitement over seeing him again, his grin cocksure and knowing that everything would fall into place because he was Keith and everything worked out for him, he laced sarcasm in his voice, “It’s great to see you again.”

Lance smirked and Pidge cut in, fearing the inevitable fake argument between the two that would last for hours.

“No time, guys, we need to get Shiro and get to Blue,” they turned to Keith expectantly, “You still remember where Blue was… er… is right?” 

Keith gave a reassuring nod and, before anyone could even begin a plan of attack, he rushed into the tent, hands balled into fists, ready to fight. He had taken out the men investigating Shiro with such ease it was almost laughable the first time, now it would be a piece of cake. Of course Lance wanted a piece of that sweet, sweet Shiro saving action/cake and sprinted after him, giving the single guard a good blow to the jaw while Keith handled two others. They cut Shiro loose, his whole body limp and easy to maneuver between the four of them working together. 

Iverson, this whole time, had been watching the feeds. Watched as they wheeled a man in who was wearing nothing but a full body black jumpsuit and a raggedy crop top in the shade of a faded purple. The man looked half happy half pissed and Iverson’s whole body went cold as he got a real good look at the man who he recognized as Takashi Shirogane. 

Shirogane was lifted to a gurney, the team of scientists around him touching and prodding and just simply in awe of the crash around them. All the while, Shirogane was talking slurred from the crash, trying to speak over the scientists who kept trying to calm him down. 

The team of suited up scientists were taking samples, inspecting Shirogane’s arm which looked to be metal, and pulled him into a tent which was opened up around the crash site to contain it. 

Shirogane eventually regained his wits and spilled the most information that Iverson had gotten all day. 

“I am so mad!” Shirogane started up as he realized where he was. “This is the sixth dang time I’ve escaped from the Galra! Where is my team! Where is the Black Lion?!” 

“Calm down, you’re on earth, the date is-” the scientist tried to explain to Shirogane, but as soon as the date was said he began to laugh, hard enough that the scientists around him tightened his restraints. 

“Listen to me and listen to me well.” Shirogane had humor in his voice, but the underlying layer of it was of steel. “My name is Takashi Shirogane. The Galra are coming, they’re going to get too close, too quickly and the only thing that's going to fight them off is what appears to be a giant Blue Lion. That’s where me, a missing person, and three cadets from the Galaxy Garrison are going to be-” 

“Sedate him.” One of the suited figures in the room says, cutting Shirogane off. 

“No!” Iverson and Shirogane manage to scream at the same time, Shirogane fighting against the restraints and Iverson gripping his computer monitor. 

It's too late though, the needle is placed in Shirogane’s remaining flesh arm and his eyes flutter closed. Iverson snaps his computer closed and marches out of his office, down to the hangar where they keep all the vehicles, and checks out the quickest car he can. 

Iverson arrives just as he sees Lance, Hunk, and Pidge load up into what appears to be a handmade, or at the very least heavily modified, hoverbike and for a achingly familiar figure to start up the vehicle. 

Iverson knew that young man, but couldn't place him, it was on the tip of his tongue. A relative of a student of his perhaps? 

But the four (plus their unconscious passenger) see the headlights of Iverson’s buggy and they veer off into the desert night. 

Iverson, of course, follows. 

Along with what appears to be the rest of the damn Garrison. Each of them in a heavier, bulkier actual vehicle instead of Iversons exposed buggy, meant for hauling loads and supplies, not desert chases. But as soon as the Garrison vehicles get into range, the radio on Iverson’s buggy bursts into enraged life. High ranking officers, scientists, each and every one of them being alerted to the break in and stampeding after the hoverbike to retrieve lost data. “They took the humanoid that arrived on the crash site!” One particularly mad general said over the airwaves. “We’ve been informed that the rogues have taken the crash victim and are taking him somewhere. We have reason to believe that the crash victim is hostile. Do not engage fire.” 

Iverson felt a rock settle deep in his stomach, his children, the ones he teaches, are all bright gifted things. None of them could be remotely considered hostile, sometimes volitive and hot headed? Sure. But dangerous? Absolutely not. Not at all actually.

The chase went on for what only was about a minute, but felt much longer. The stone in Iversons stomach dropping out entirely when the hoverbike flew from the cliff, gracefully falling through the air before landing below them. 

The whole Garrison expedition began to talk through radio chatter, how to get down there and follow the rogues versus why they needed to get back to the crash and examine the technology from the clearly alien pod before it deteriorates further than it already has and or the press began to poke around it. 

Iverson makes a decision here. Biting his lip, looking out across the landscape and watching as his students speed away from him, Iverson throws his buggy in reverse and begins to try and find the path to the valley below him. 

Meanwhile, Keith parks the bike right outside his house. The sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon line and it's been a very long night. 

Hunk is already taking care of Shiro, cradling the man and promising to bring him inside to lay him in Keith’s bed, where they put him last time too. Pidge is scrambling in after Hunk, ready and willing to help him in the kitchen after Hunk puts down Shiro to a more comfortable location and gets to work on breakfast. Lance waits, watching Keith lock his bike to the side of his porch and tug a tarp over it. 

“Miss us last night?” Lance asks, voice serious as he takes in the silence around them. 

“Yeah. The house is much smaller than I remember. To quiet too.” Keith shrugs, an awkward little movement that’s almost half forgotten. 

“We have another hour till Shiro wakes up. You have clothes for him this time or do we have to raid your storage again?” Lance laughs, breaking the slight tension that had hung in the air and allowing Keith to actually say ‘yes’ in response to the question. 

“Went out when I snapped back from red. Thought the whole thing was a dream for a second or two. But I rechecked the carvings and bought clothes just in case.” Keith tries to hide the waiver in his voice as he thinks about when he woke, twisting from the lingering pull and screaming as he fell from the bed. 

The doubt in his mind, the panic that raced through his thoughts. The pain that lingered where he could once trace scars on his skin. The wholeness of his mouth, a scar from falling down a ravine not there anymore. He counted all ten toes, not the eight he had gotten used to after a Galra shot him in the foot for interrogation. His hair back to short and, as Lance liked to tease, mullet like, the piercing he got on the lizard people planet gone like the tattoo on his arm of a blazing red fire that looped together. The one that his team had a matching set with, their part with their element. 

Lance reaches out, a comfort gesture more than anything, and Keith accepts it, locking their elbows together and basking in the feeling of being reunited once again. 

The two walked into the shack and Pidge and Hunk had already taken over the kitchen area, Hunk singing along to whatever Pidge was playing on her phone from YouTube. Lance joined them, taking the canned biscuits from her hand and belittling Keith for buying canned biscuits instead of just dough. 

Keith took offense to that and started to explain why the hell everything in his desert fucking shack had to be either canned or quickly eaten when Hunk reached over him to snag the sausage Keith had bought yesterday in his errand run in the fridge. 

Keith had bought a lot of food actually, mostly preservatives but that worked for them fine. Lance also encouraged Keith to ‘pack an overnight bag’ because the three of them sure as Quiznack had. They were not going to space with just the clothes on their backs this time, they had planned out and each brought with them a backpack's worth of items they found to be essential. Most of it being clothing or shoes or personal items such as blankets or pillows or toothbrushes. Keith, thinking that a brilliant idea, moves away from the kitchen (never had any talent cooking anything) and pulls out his old duffle bag and just starts to packs everything he owns. 

You’d be surprised at how quickly shoes can be worn down in space. As well as t-shirts and jeans and boxers. 

When complaining once about the sorry state of their boxers and underwear once, Shiro had laughed and said that humans where a weird species and the only one who actually wore any. Shiro, having been wearing the Galra jumpsuit he had been put in for nearly three years, had basically forgotten to care about anything regarding his fashion choices. 

Keith had been appalled. Disgusted. 

Then Shiro had laughed and asked the team if they actually wore underwear in their Paladin armor and that sparked a debate that lasted to this day, so. 

(Shiro, Lance, and Allura were in the no underwear side of the argument. Keith, Hunk and Pidge kept their wits about them and were solidly pro-undergarments.)

Now that Keith actually bought clothes that would fit Shiro, maybe he would see the light of day at last. 

It took a while to remember to pack everything, and Keith’s duffle ended up being the largest because he packed both his and Shiro’s stuff in it. He left an outfit out for Shiro to wear when he woke up though, and that would be happening anytime soon. 

Hunk had cooked up a feast, Lance helping the most with the biscuits and the jam. Pidge was mostly stuffing their bag with all of Keith's peanut butter he had on hand. 

Which, admitted, was a decent amount of peanut butter. 

“Why do You only have extra crunchy.” Pidge whined as Keith placed his bag by the Lance’s and Hunk’s. “I hate peanuts.” 

“You like peanut butter though?” Keith asks. “You should like peanuts then, it gives it a better texture.” 

“Excuse you? Creamy peanut butter is superior-” Pidge begins, and Keith joins in the fight enthusiastically with his teammate. 

The four of them argue over breakfast, Hunk joining Keith’s side with a defense to crunchy peanut butter goodness, with Pidge and Lance battling it out for creamy. 

They are starting to throw little pieces of biscuits at each other when a voice breaks them out of the debate by saying: 

“Honestly? Nutella is way better.” 

“Shiro!” The four of them say at once, all clamouring to let their leader sit down and have his breakfast. 

“What's up guys. What happened?” Shiro thanks them as he sits at the crowded table and snags a couple of sausages and the last two remaining biscuits. “Because I woke up and escaped from the Galra again. Ulaz was there. It was kinda confusing.” 

“We got sent back in time!” Lance exclaims happily, tapping his now whole eye. “Age regressed and everything, Keith has his mullet again.” 

Shiro turns to look at Keith as Keith begins to huffily try and flatten his hair down manually. 

“Holy shit.” Shiro whispers to himself. “Now that I’ve seen it long I do have to agree with Lance about the mullet.” 

Keith has the most betrayed look on his face as Lance nearly shrieks with happiness. Hunk steals a sausage from Lance’s plate as Lance is doing a celebration jig, Pidge fights Hunk for a moment over it but ultimately Hunk comes out on top. 

“I knew it! I knew it all along! Space Dad has admitted to it-!” Lance was cut off in the middle of his victory spiel with a heavy handed knock to the door of the shack. 

The five Paladins all look at each other, debating, figuring out if this happened last time? No okay what should we do now? Is it really an alternate universe then? Should they had have listened to Slav more?!

“Open up cadets!” A gruff voice on the other side barks out. “I know you four are in there with the missing Kerberos pilot! I’m alone and unarmed open this door!” 

Iverson. 

They all look like a mess, none of them have slept more than five hours in the past forty-eight. Shiro is still in his Galra slave uniform for god's sake. None of them have any idea what even to say to this man that outside a shack in the desert demanding to be let in. Iverson knocks again. He doesn't sound happy to be left waiting. 

The team all tosses around looks before they decide that since it's Keith’s house then he should be the one to open the door and greet their unwanted company. Keith, of course, tries to say with his eyes that he very clearly has social anxiety do not make him do this please. Shiro cuts it off with a ‘do-this-one-thing-so-help-me-do-not-disrespect-me-I-am-your-father’ glare that always gets the Paladins to do the thing they didn't want to do. 

Keith gets up, walks to the door, and takes a deep breath. 

He opens it to see Iverson, looking a little worse for the wear, irritated and with that one vein in his forehead popping out. Keith wonders, for a wild moment, if Iverson has to manage his blood pressure with medication or not. 

“You’re holding a refugee in this house, boy.” Iverson grounds out. 

And that? That wording right there? That ‘boy’ at the end that was spit out like it was venom? That makes Keith not want to play nice with the other children in the room no Sir. That phrasing makes Keith want to scrunch up his nose and spit in Iversons one remaining eye. 

(Keith had once seen a Galra officer commit a fatal move by spitting in Lance’s one working eye a few missions after he had lost the right one. This was the only reason Keith didn't actually commit the act he wanted to, because he remembers how Lance had beaten the Galra who had done that.) 

(It's gonna be weird now that Lance had both back actually. Huh. Wait. Keith. You’re sidetracked.)

“I’m holding no such thing. This is a simple hunting cottage. I’m going to ask you to leave my property.” Keith metaphorically spits right back at Iverson. 

“Don't lie to me, you’re not good at it boy, I know that you are currently hiding three cadet members of the Galaxy Garrison and a crash survivor. Let. Me. In.” Iverson tries to walk around Keith, using his bulkier frame to push Keith aside but Keith isn't as weak as he appears. 

“No. This is private property. I’m asking you to leave.” Keith narrows his eyes. “Before I call the cops. You have no right to be here.” 

“Don't think the cops can help you, I saw with my own eyes a refugee of the state get kidnapped by none other than you on that speeder that's tied to your railing there. Let me in before I call the whole Garrison down here to take this piece of shit apart piece by piece.” 

Keith blinks. 

His hand twitches by his side, a familiar call for a bayard that isn't his yet, before it slides up to his hip in a fashion that to one not well versed in Keith’s body language just meant testing a hand against a cocked hip. Or irritation. 

To the four others in the kitchen eavesdropping on the conversation, it meant that Keith was about to pull the blade from his back. 

“We surrender!” Lance calls from inside, hands shooting up in the human sign of defenseless. 

Keith is startled enough by Lance’s call that Iverson can push through the doorway and into the home. 

It really is just a hunting cabin, a two room thing that hosted a bed, a couch, and a kitchen that had been taken over by a small folding card table that had five plates arranged on it. The floor was worn dirty wood, the walls creaky and old, the bedroom had no door because it didn't need one. The decorations where various hunting objects and some photographs of a younger Keith and his father here in the desert. 

Iverson gave a glance around and immediately realized that these kids looked a little hopeless at the moment. 

Shirogane continued to eat his food that was on his plate, legs pulled up under him in a criss-cross Indian style. Hunk and Pidge were sitting, their hands high in the air to show that they were surrendering along with Lance, who was the only one at the table area standing up. 

“We give up, okay? Let us pack up here and we’ll all drive happily back to base with you.” Lance begins to talk, and the others instantly relax. “We’ll get Shiro some actual clothes -we have some for you this time- and we’ll finish up our breakfast. Then we will get back in your vehicle, and we will go to the Garrison.” 

“You see, this has happened before, but Shiro lost control of the ship this time. It crashed and we had to get him out of there. He’s been sending us supplies and information for months now. He's our inside man. We need him healthy and well and look! He looks like he hasn't eaten a good meal in months because he hasn’t! Are you going to deny a man his food, Iverson?” Lance sighs, eyebrows ticking up and glancing downtrodden to the floor. “We were just trying to get the information collected by Shiro to pass it onto Commander Harris. Commander Harris has been after that promotion for a while now, and he says we help a lot by doing this for him. Please don't tell Commander Harris that we crashed the ship. He’ll be able to cover it up like he always does.” Lance now looks back at Iverson, head on, and his gaze is full of pure ice. It freezes Iverson in place. 

“Maybe we could work out a deal? Commander Iverson? I know that Commander Harris hates you, keeps you in the dark about everything. I bet Harris even didn't tell you about this little stunt he’s pulled with the higher ups and the Voltron Alliance did he? Harris has been trying for that promotion for years, and you're his only large competitor for it, Commander Iverson.”

Iverson blanks for a minute here. Lance’s words washing over him and the ice that was held in the cadets gaze was replaced with a fire in Iversons chest. Harris? That twit? Was keeping secrets from him?! Harris was about as fucking trustful as a wet paper bag! Harris was trying to steal that promotion out from underneath him using his own cadets?! 

Iverson was fuming. 

“Deal.” Iverson says, nodding at the kids. “You finish up eating and I’ll escort you back to the Garrison. Hurry up now. You three are already absent from breakfast mess and I do not want you missing class.” 

Lance’s smile is stunning, brilliant and wide. 

Shiro continues on eating, hasn't stopped during Lance’s whole story actually, and trades a nod with Lance. Pidge and Hunk begin cleanup, placing the dishes in the sink and beginning to wash and dry them. Keith moves from the front door to the kitchen to help them. 

Once Shiro is done eating he asks Keith where he put his clothes and Keith responds with the nightstand by the bed. 

The clothing that Keith had bought yesterday still has tags on them, all roughly estimated to be Shiro’s size. The shirt was a long sleeved black Henley, with simple soft sweatpants and-! Shiro laughed as he picked up the black boxer briefs that Keith had included in the whole ensemble. 

After a minute or two trying to figure out how in the hell one removed the Galra jumpsuit without the aid of Altean equipment Shiro managed to hook the side seam and the whole thing unraveled, starting with his right wrist and following that seam up to his torso and down his side to his ankle, the whole suit peeled off easily enough. Oh god it felt good to be out of that thing. 

Oh god earth fabric felt even nicer. 

Shiro had missed simple cotton while in space. He had. Shiro tied the sweatpants knot to cinch at his waist and discover pockets and nearly wept. Very few races had figured out pockets, and the ones that had usually found them unfashionable so they never incorporated them into the clothing. This? This was absolute heaven. 

The shoes, sadly, still were pulled out of Keith’s father's storage and slipped on. 

Iverson was standing in the living room area, arms crossed and with an idle expression of irritation across his features. Shiro just moved out from the bedroom when Iverson began to command to cadets to get a move on, hurry up and get in the damn buggy so they could get back already. 

Keith’s duffle was placed in the buggy’s “trunk” area, along with Pidge and the three backpacks. Pidge had to hold onto the bungees holding down the luggage and pray they didn't fall. 

Iverson was driving, Shiro in the passenger seat, Lance, Keith and Hunk all squeezed in the back with Lance in the middle. 

Keith was giving directions, head one way then the next, turn right at the largest outcropping of red rocks. Iverson followed only by the merit that Keith lived in the damn desert he should know how to navigate it. So when the buggy was headed up a cliff and Iverson managed to catch a glimpse of a dark shape miles and miles away, Iverson was confused. 

And that confusion led to anger. 

“Where are we, exactly?” Iverson tried for nonchalance, “We should be at the Garrison by now, it’s nearly nine thirty!” 

“We’re close.” The black haired kid lied, nearly half hanging out the buggy and with his eyes trained ahead at the rock formation in front of them. 

Iverson slammed the breaks. The buggy skipped for about ten feet, but stopped cold in its tracks. The entirety of the kart was silent, looking at Iverson and waiting for the action that Iverson would take in this situation. Waiting to react to anything. 

“You’re leading me away from the Garrison.”

“Why don't you believe us?” McClain piped from the backseat, “It takes a while to get back. Took us a while to get all the way out here.” 

“That's not an answer, McClain.” Iverson snaps. “You’ve talked around everyone except your damn teammates since yesterday and I think before I go further I need an explanation-” 

Iverson blinks, and within an instant a hot searing heat is balanced carefully right underneath his chin. Iverson’s eye snaps to the white-hot hand at his throat, follows it all the way to Shirogane who’s looking pained at having to do this. 

“Look, Mitch.” Shirogane sighs, and Iverson is taken back by the fact that Shirogane is actually considered not underneath him anymore. (Hadn't had that fact reminded to him in a while, ever since the official funeral) “Me and my team need to get another minute out, we need to get to blue and we need to do it fast. We have a time limit here, actually, so if you continued following Keith’s instructions that would be swell.” 

“We need to go forward.” The black haired kid, Keith, demands from the back. “I can see the cave entrance up ahead.” 

“I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on.” Iverson stands his ground, neck tight against the heat of Shirogane’s metal arm and back straight. 

Shirogane sighs, and reaches down with his flesh hand. 

Iverson closes his eye and waits for it. 

Nothing happens, only the click of a seat belt buckle. 

When Iverson opens his eyes Shirogane is getting out of the buggy and catching a bag thrown by Gunderson in the back. 

The five begin to run, weighted down by the weight of the bags they carry and the heat of the desert. 

Iverson yells out to them all, trying to call them back, but the five are steadily making their way forwards, everyone but Pidge carrying a bag each loaded down with the weight of something and the heavy heat of the desert’s sun. 

Cursing, Iverson readjusts his hands on the wheel and floors it, heading to cut the runners off and keep them from getting further. Iverson passes them, and turns his buggy just so that it's blocking a good portion of the canyon they were all in. 

This, apparently, stops none of them. Pidge, going the quickest without a load, simply moves around the cart, hoping over the hood and sliding to the other side. Lance dives through the open backseat, jumping the whole thing like a damn hurdler and without breaking stride. Keith is next, deciding it's a good idea to just go directly under the buggy instead of around it, grabbing the boost bar and sliding along the ground until he pops out the other side. Shiro yells out Keith’s name, tosses a backpack over the entire vehicle, and uses his slim body to squeeze through behind. Hunk is the slowest, carrying the heaviest bag, but he decides to just go over the car entirely. 

When Hunk lands the other Paladins pick up the pace again, having temporarily slowed to allow everyone to get around the block. Pidge calls out the distance left, only about a hundred meters, and they pick up the pace from a quick jog to a sprint. 

Lance follows easily, his legs long and his body built for endurance. Keith is right behind Lance, using his superior speed to make up for Lance’s advantage in stride length. 

Shiro is behind the two hotheads, groaning at having to pick up the pace because running was never his favorite exercise and having to do it for an extended moment made his currently weakened body groan in displeasure. Hunk brought up the rear, never would be the fastest but once he got moving would never quit. 

Pidge skidded into the caverns small entrance, hands slipping on the wall as they used the momentum they had to turn using centripetal force. 

Iverson, backs the buggy up, slams the back into the canyon wall but he care little for that now, and floors it forward so that he can catch up to the five. It only takes a minute, but Iverson is diving into the crack in the wall behind them all, having to abandon the buggy in front of the small crack to investigate on foot. Up ahead he sees Lance running his hands across the dark walls, gently, almost revertnly. 

The whole cave lights up a bright blue, markings Iverson hadn’t seen before lighting up the walls in various different images. Pidge sees Iverson in the glow of the light, and calls out a warning to their team. Iverson moves towards them, to bring them back to the Garrison, when the floor from underneath them collapsed. Crumbled like wet paper and they all let out a scream. 

Iverson saw them go down, the elation in each of their faces as they tumbled downwards into the hole. Iverson felt the cold dread in his stomach again, hearing the screams of his students as they fell. Iverson didn’t even think as he dove downwards after them, his instinct telling him to protect these children that had fallen somewhere in the depths of this earth. Iverson hears the rushing of water as he jumps, feels it on his back as he rushes downwards, trailing after the fading whoops and hollers of the children that he is responsible for. 

The ride down the water only lasted a minute, and Iverson landed hard on his ass. It was easy enough to stand up and follow the glowing cave carvings, follow the voices brimming with excitement. 

The room before Iverson opened up, a huge cavern filled to the brim with a massive fucking blue cat. A shimmering net covered the entire thing in a sphere, carefully protecting it in a delicate looking peace around it all. Everything looked picture perfect, nothing in the cavern looked like it had been touched in years, settled down with no interference of anyone or anything. 

“Blue!” Lance cried out, running towards the clearly alien looking machine. “My beautiful baby! The most gorgeous thing in the known universe!” He’s halfway to the machine when Iverson jerks into action. 

Iverson is scared, terrified of this thing that his student is running towards with no sense of caution or abandon. Lance always tended to jump when he got excited, rushed forward when a new topic was brought up in school or if a new kind of flying technique was displayed in flying sessions. Lance was going to die here and Iverson would not let that be his fault. 

“Don’t you take another step further!” Iverson screams. “Don’t you even think about it!” 

“Oh back off Iverson!” Lance huffs, spins on his heel to face the direction of the voice. “Quiznack!” 

Iverson is taken aback for a moment, not used to student's talking back to him. 

Lance turns again, to walk towards the glowing barrier. Iverson reaches out, runs to his student and catches Lance’s arm. 

“I can’t allow you to do that. We don’t know what’ll happen if you do you stupid child.” Iverson tries to explain. “It could hurt you.” 

Lance yanks himself away from Iverson’s hand, face stone cold and posture stiff. Iverson makes another grab, but is stopped by the larger mass of Hunk grabbing him by the back of his commander's uniform. 

Lance slams his hand onto the particle barrier and it dissolves under his touch like wet paper, the machine moved to greet them, roaring upwards and shaking the entire cave. It sounds happy to finally have Lance back in its grasp again. The head of the lion pushes against its paladin, gently as ever and a purr rumbling from in its chest. Lance mumbles spanish against her muzzle, softly cooing at her. 

Iverson stand completely still as the cat moves its massive jaws towards his small student. Stands frozen as Lance asks it to open up. Feels his knees weaken as the blue lion actually responds and lets Lance walk inside its mouth. Hunk is still holding Iverson up, so Iverson doesn't actually fall to the ground. 

Lance nearly dances inside his lion, Pidge following him with a laugh. Keith is nearly racing inside again as well, having found more of a home in space than anything on earth. Shiro is trying to keep his team from actually just exploding in their eragerness. 

Hunk is still supporting Iverson, by he’s clearly ready to just drop the man to run onto Blue. Hell Hunk is slowly lowering his teacher down to either support his own weight or to lay him gently on the floor. Iverson manages to lock his knees uderneath himself before he ends up on his ass for the second time today, but he’s still frozen as Hunk begins to trot forward, screaming something about how he misses Yellow. 

The Lion begins to move up, to close its mouth, when Iverson’s legs begin to move.

He takes a running leap at the thing, the bottom of its jaw clipping Iversons shins and he hisses in pain, but by the time that the Lion is fully straight again, its maw closed tight, Iverson is fully inside. 

The inside a shiny, if a bit dusty, interior. An overall tone of silvery white with blue accents. Teal lighting gives the whole thing an otherworldly glow, it almost fills Iverson with a kind of reverence. It makes Iverson feel dirty in comparison. 

The small hallway has two branching paths, one of the pathways closed by a solid door that, as far as Iverson could see, had no handle. So Iverson had to take the second pathway that led down the steepest set of stairs ever and into what looked like a large empty room with straps for cargo. The whole room itself was empty of anything, and looked to have a large opening on the floor in the center of the room. 

Iverson walked over to the seal and tried to pry the hatch open, tries to open it, but the metal is slick and has no grip. The hatch must lead outside then, if it's been sealed this tightly. 

Iverson stands to inspect the rest of the room when suddenly the whole room turns sideways on itself and Iverson falls. The whole thing twists and turns and spins and Iverson feels the rumble of the machinery around him like it was living.Iverson manages to grab onto a stray cargo strap and he hangs on with dear life. 

He doesn't realize he's the one screaming until gravity goes out around him. The cargo straps floating gently, Iverson himself floating without weight in the middle of the cargo hold. 

A moment of peace, of recollection, occurs. Iverson floats for a moment in the zero gravity of this cargo hold and realizes that he was currently in space. The outside world around him quiets for a moment, the sounds outside of the hold going muted and soft for a moment, the sounds of scraping and clawing and something that sounded like cheap laser sound effects from a Star Wars movie. Iverson floats in the middle of an alien cargo hold in space and thinks about himself. 

He feels selfish for doing so, thinking of himself when the situation around him has spiraled so out of control that he’s in space for god's sake. He think’s of the dog that waits for him at home, about his brother and sister (both younger than him) and how he needs to tell them about his day when he gets back down. Iverson thinks about his colleagues, how they had only a brief warning before Iverson had gallivanted off to find his students. 

God, his students. 

How they all looked at him, how he always wanted the best for each of them even if it meant pushing down others. How everything has gone so wrong since the Kerberos mission. 

Everything in the Garrison had gone to absolute shit after the very public Kerberos mission had been covered up so damn badly, with eight damn press conferences saying twelve different damn things. 

Iverson feels a pull, and that’s what brings him back to himself. It felt like all his bones popping at the same time, all the blood in his body rushing around too quickly to be comfortable. The sensation stops after a quick moment, and soon after the gravity comes back with the harsh pull of reentry, the yank against Iverson’s whole body that threw him across the cargo hold like a ragdoll. 

Gravity comes back in a rush and it takes Iverson a second to pull his old bones back up and actually get out of the hold. He walks out of the Lion’s mouth, legs shaky and breathing heavy.

The sight that greets him is Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, and Shiro all standing in front of what looks like a massive alien castle. 

Iverson looked up, speechless, shocked into stillness. 

The only thing that alerts the others to Iverson’s presence is when the Lion behind them roars he screams at the top of his lungs. 

The five in front of him jump at the scream, eyes wide as they whip around in various defensive positions. 

“Commander Iverson?!”

“Mitch!?”

“Iverson!?” 

The various screams of his name are called at they rush over to him, surprise and panic on their faces as they all begin to talk over each other in the most headache inducing series of conversation that Iverson ever had the displeasure of listening to. 

“Cadets!” Iverson yells, quieting them up, “Please, explain to me what is happening.” 

The five of them shared a heavy glance, as if debating, before a Shirogane is putting a hand on Iverson’s shoulder and pulling Iverson forward with the rest of them into the castle. Iverson resists for a split second before allowing them to pull him forward. 

“Come with us a moment, we have a friend that will explain everything to you.”


End file.
